US Soldiers toast victory at Berchtesgaden Source: Wikipedia via US Army
Once upon a time, an American private first class entered Adolf Hitler’s lair in Berchtesgaden, tantamount to taking a stroll through Ali Baba’s cave. He and his commanding officer could not resist and assembled an elaborate, yet simple scheme to misappropriate objects of all kinds, from Hitler’s desk, cabinets, works lying on the floor, against walls and so forth. They sent these items including an engraving by Cranach, to the US via the military postal system—APO. An untold number of objects left the lair in that fashion. Only one was recovered, only because the soldier, who had registered as a graduate student at a New York City college in the late 1940s, had admitted his wayward behavior to his counselor who reported it to the dean who alerted the State Department. Next thing we know, after arduous negotiations, the student ceded the stolen item without revealing the existence of the other items. To this day, he has protected the identity of his commanding officer, fumbling and stuttering when explaining the reasons for his action. This individual became a leading Holocaust scholar and one of the foremost academic opponents of restitution as an ethical concept, as a teachable concept, as a historical phenomenon following acts of genocide and plunder driven by ideological crimes against an entire people, and as a strategy of justice for Holocaust victims and their heirs. This irrational behavior regarding his crime mirrors strangely the comportment of Jewish officials, Holocaust museum directors, Holocaust studies faculty and administrators, curriculum designers and Holocaust educators as they reject a cardinal principle of the Third Reich policy against its Jewish victims, as well as a pillar of antisemitic behavior--the forcible removal of all property belonging to Jews as the first step towards their dehumanization and marginalization as productive members of civil society.
Art world officials have behaved in similar fashion when confronted with the realization that they might have to part with objects in the collections that they steward. They behave much like the former PFC from Berchtesgaden, with an inflated sense of proprietariness, a very kindisch behavior that one might expect more from an outraged, self-righteous child. And yet, the grandstanding indignation of museum officials and curators and dealers and collectors and their attorneys and even art historians and so-called provenance research specialists in those very institutions, all behave as if they are the self-anointed guardians of Kultur.
When the Nazis steal everything there is to steal from the dozen or so members of the French branch of the Rothschild family between the summer of 1940 and 1944, part of their haul includes rare—one of a kind—medieval manuscripts, including those manuscripts custom-made for French nobility like “Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berri.”
Labeled R 974 by the ERR, the manuscript is shipped out from the Jeu de Paume to the Reich. Nothing more can be said about where it went… until 1951.
R 974
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv
Lane Faison, the last director of the Munich Central Collecting Point (MCCP) in what was the US zone of Occupation of Germany, wrote to a Dr. Haars about this rarest of books, wondering if the Gothic manuscript in question had ended up at the MCCP or at the Rare Book repository of Berchtesgaden or still sihpped by Goering on the so-called “Overing Train.” There is only one location in Germany known as Overing; it is in the eastern suburbs of Bremen in northwestern Germany.
An equally appealing tidbit comes to us from Faison about Gisela Limberger, Goering’s former private secretary and unofficial curator of the Goering Collection who herself misappropriate 11 crates of silver and china from the Jeu de Paume. According to Faison, Limberger contacted Rose Valland, France’s Resistance hero who selflessly sacrificed four years of her young life in Nazi-occupied Paris at the Jeu de Paume recording movements of stolen works in and out of the museum. Or was it Valland who contacted Limberger? No matter, Limberger let out that the manuscript might have ended up at Berchtesgaden which prompted Faison to ask Haars about its present whereabouts.
R 974
Source: ERR Project via Bundesarchiv
Sadly, one can conclude that, unless the Rothschilds recovered the manuscript after 1951, it is still missing. This brief note is a wonderful example of how small strands of communication can provide numerous insights into the workings and dynamics of plunder and restitution.
However, the ERR card identifies the manuscript as both a "Tagebuch" and "Stundenbuch." One question to raise is: if there are several versions of the manuscript, which is it since the most elaborate of the duc de Berry's manuscript lies at the Institut de France in Paris?
By the way, who was/is Dr. Haars? There is no indication of title, rank, organization with whom he was affiliated. One tantalizing clue: a Dietrich Haars and his wife acquired a book business in Winsen (south of Hamburg) in 1951.
In a wee article published on 10 March 1951, “Le Monde” reported the discovery of crates at Ilbarritz, near Biarritz, labeled “Martin Bormann, Reichsleiter, München.” Joke, right? Wrong.
Incredible, but true.
As far as can be ascertained, on or about 8 March 1951, eighteen crates were found in bushes alongside a beach at Ilbarritz, just south of Biarritz, in Basque country, a hop and a skip away from the Franco-Spanish border and from the town of San Sebastian. The crates were turned over to local police who called in Customs who, in turn, summoned Pierre Labrouche, director of the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne, to inspect the crates and give his professional assessment as to quality, value, and origin. Mr. Labrouche would only comment on the sixteen paintings that were housed in two large crates, some of which were of fairly decent quality. The rest of the items, he professed, fell outside his area of expertise since they were mostly decorative objects, like clocks, porcelain and other objets d’art.
Upon closer examination, one of the paintings yielded a clue as to the origin of the crates. An oil by a German artist, Boettger, it had been exhibited in Munich in 1942. Another indication on the back of the painting pointed to the Obersalzberg at Berchtesgaden.
In April and May 1945, American troops had liberated Berchtesgaden and Münich, stumbling upon troves of looted art. The French Foreign Affairs Ministry’s art recovery specialists, and, in particular, Ms. Rose Valland, speculated that the painting and the other items had been plundered from the main Nazi loot depots in and around Munich, and that some of the items had belonged to Martin Bormann. According to Ms. Valland, there had been significant acts of plunder committed by local laborers at the Führerbau in Munich and in Berchtesgaden before the arrival of American troops there. It could be that some of the thieves made off with the loot, crated it, and planned on crossing into Spain with it.
Why those 18 crates ended up in bushes overlooking a white sand beach south of Biarritz will never be known. As to the owners of the plundered items in those crates, the mystery will endure since no inventory of Martin Bormann's collection survived the war, assuming that one even did exist.
The crates were shipped to Paris for ‘further disposition.’
